Mad Frank: Britain's Most Dangerous Criminal

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All Rise...

Judge Maurice Cobbs has been certified insane far more than a paltry three times.

The Charge

Another Kray Era Legend? Killed 40 People? Certified Insane 3 Times

The Case

The thing that hooked me more than anything else about the DVD Mad Frank:
Britain's Most Dangerous Criminal! was the claim splashed across the front
of the DVD: "Killed 40 People? Certified Insane 3 Times." Wow, I
thought. Three times?

WHY? It seems to me, in my limited knowledge of mental health issues,
once would have been sufficient. Was he declared insane, then cured and had a
couple of relapses? Had he perhaps been the victim of some sort of legal
red-tape nightmare, forced to prove his sanity again and again after being
wrongly classified as a madman? Or was the claim simply the sort of hyperbole
that you might expect from a sensationalist direct-to-DVD documentary? Granted,
being able to claim 40 kills as a career highlight—for that matter, being
able to claim being declared insane three times as a career
highlight—certainly seems to support the idea that he may, in fact, be
insane. But how could I know for sure?

There seemed to be only one way to find out. No, I didn't watch the
DVD—not right then, anyway. To tell the truth, I was a little intimidated.
Flipping the DVD over, I'd read that "Britain's most Legendary[sic]
criminal?" had a terrible, jaw dropping history with his victims: "If
he wasn't chopping them up with an axe, he was pulling his victims[sic] teeth
out with pliers. Robberies, killings, prison riots—-- Frankie Frasier is
as mad as it gets." An axe? Pliers?! You have to admit, the
guy sounds absolutely mad as a hatter. Crazy as a soup sandwich. Nutty as
squirrel poop. "This is," says the text on the back of the package,
"the Ultimate Gangster Video!"

It's filmed in Gangstervision to boot.

Even the cover to the DVD is slightly unsettling. As I slit the cellophane
wrapping, slowly freeing Mad Frank from his prison of thin, clear plastic, it
seemed that the picture of Britain's most dangerous criminal stared deep into my
psyche, insane eyes following me no matter where I moved my head. A cold shiver
ran down my spine as I contemplated the terrible awesomeness of this deadly
criminal underworld figure. One of a series of DVDs from Entertainment Programs,
Inc. about infamous gangsters from the United Kingdom (other titles include
The Krays: Geordie Connection and Roy Shaw: Brute Force), Mad Frank:
Britain's Most Dangerous Criminal! boasts an impressive array of special
features, including raw footage from Reggie Kray's funeral procession and the
first interview that the Kray twins have given since they died about seven years
ago (thanks to the amazing abilities of "Psychic to the Stars" Sally
Morgan).

The packaging also boasts interviews with "all the top names in British
crime." For example, we get to hear from such underworld luminaries as John
McVicar, the criminal-turned-journalist who in the 1960s was named Public Enemy
Number One by Scotland Yard, with a "dead or alive" reward placed on
his head by Security Express; Charles Bronson (not the actor, obviously,
although one of the other interviewees featured on the disc is, ironically,
Death Wish director Michael Winner), a.k.a. Michael Peterson, a.k.a.
Charles Ali Ahmed, a man who has been in jail nearly continuously since he was
19 years old in over 120 prisons, and is considered a maximum security prisoner
because of the number of inmate and guard attacks that he has been involved in
(including a 2000 hostage-taking incident that earned him a discretionary life
sentence); and Dodgy Dave Courtney, a celebrity criminal not unlike Mad Frankie
himself, who claims to be the inspiration for Vinnie Jones's hard-man legbreaker
character from Lock, Stock and Two
Smoking Barrels.

With a roster of such intimidating commentators and—let's face
it—that picture on the front (shudder), I had to take a moment to gather
my wits about me. Splashing a handful of cool water on my face, I gagged when
some of it went up my nose and then looked at myself in the bathroom mirror.
Once I started down this path, I knew, there could be no return to the blissful
ignorance of my happy-go-lucky life. Could I meet the Geordies on their own
terms? Was I hard enough to enter the shadowy world of hard man and old-school
British gangster Frank Fraser?

Gritting my teeth, I knew the answer before I even asked the question. No
sacrifice is too great for you, our loyal and faithful DVD Verdict readers. For
you, I would take my first steps into the murky criminal world of Britain's most
dangerous criminal. For you, I would experience the legend that was Mad Frankie
Fraser.

As I turned the DVD over in my hand, contemplating the gravity of what I was
about to do in the name of journalistic integrity, my wife happened to look over
my shoulder. "What's that you got there?" she asked.

I hesitated. Exposing myself to the terror that was Mad Frank was one thing;
could I possibly expose my beloved to the same mindless, numbing horror that I
was soon to experience?

"What do you know about Mad Frankie Fraser?" I asked,
cautiously.

"He's a complete waste of space," she said.

My wife, you see, comes from across the pond, from the very small island
country that was held in the grip of terror by the rampaging madman known as Mad
Frank Fraser during the Kray brothers' heyday. But instead of shuddering with
abject horror at the mention of Frankie's name, she rolled her eyes! Foolish
woman! I thought, Do you not realize upon whom you are heaping your insolent
scorn? But she was resolute in her disdain. I won't go into her exact words, but
the terms "wannabe," "loser," and "complete
tosser" were used, and not in a kindly sense. "He's useless," she
concluded, with a shake of her head.

Could it be that Mad Frank was hardly the criminal terror that Entertainment
Programs, Inc. make him out to be on the DVD packaging? The consensus on the
main feature seems to be mixed: some of those interviewed seem to think that
Frank's terrible reputation is more than deserved; others seem to think that
he's, well, a complete tosser. The feature explores various aspects of our boy's
criminal career, punctuated by a repeating clip of ol' Mad Frank throwing a
punch towards the camera. With a resounding "thwack!," the title of
the segment appears on the end of Frankie's fist. "Thwack!?" PRISON.
"Thwack!?" THE KRAYS. Frankly, it quickly became my favorite part of
the entire DVD, partly because it was so damned cheesy and partly because, deep
in my heart of hearts, I secretly thought that it was the coolest thing I'd ever
seen in my entire life. In fact, I'm thinking of co-opting the technique for my
own biography.

Listening to stories about Frank—in Gangstervision, which appears to
be an insane mish-mash of shaky, grainy footage, footage of Frank shot in heavy
shadow, standard "talking head"-type interview shots, and what I can
only assume to be second-unit footage, or possibly stock footage, altered to
seem as if it originated sometime before 1910—I got the distinct
impression that one of our gangsters from over here in the Colonies, say, Bugsy
Siegel or Dutch Schultz, for instance, would eat Mad Frank for a light bedtime
snack. Also, the feature is rather curious in that it manages to be both
unsatisfyingly short and almost painfully tedious at the same time; no mean
feat, I can assure you.

"Are these guys, like, celebrities?" I asked my wife. That
seemed to be the general attitude of the DVD's narrator towards these famous
figures of British organized crime. Each name was spoken with the sort of
reverence usually reserved for war heroes, supermodels, or Chuck Norris. It
seemed odd, considering that these people were, well, criminals. Thugs. Not the
sort of people that you'd want to invite to your daughter's wedding, although
Mad Frank is more than willing to attend, for a price; according to his official
Web site (!)—he's available as an after-dinner speaker, and for
"functions and boxing tournaments"—when he's not conducting his
Gangland Tours. Which would seem to answer the question, "Is there really a
market for this video?" But again, why are these people
celebrities?

"They're not," said my wife. "But they desperately want to
be."

A hefty selection of special features material has been included in this
package, and most of it is complete and utter crap. The crown jewel in this
collection of crap is footage from Reggie Kray's funeral procession, which is
quite possibly the single most tedious experience of my entire life to date.
Minute after excruciating minute of the most pointless, most ineptly filmed,
most mind-numbingly boring amateur video since the Paris Hilton sex tape
played across the screen, as people mumbled, milled aimlessly in crowds on the
sidewalk, and completely ignored the sad, pathetic son of a gun that held the
camera. And the rest of the special features material is just as boring, just as
pointless, and just as poorly produced. I'm assuming that the viewer from the
United Kingdom would have some sort of working knowledge of who these people are
and why they matter, but for a poor, simple Yank like myself, unfortunately
outside of the loop, the features were uninteresting, and in some cases
downright baffling—not to mention the fact that practically nothing in the
special features material has anything to do with Mad Frank. But wait, there's
more! Absolutely none of the special features that are available on the
DVD are listed on the back of the case—but the two features that are
listed ("Earnie Shavers—Bad Boy Bash" and "Until Death Do
Us Part") cannot be found on the disc. The Ultimate Gangster Video,
indeed.

But the entire package seems to reek of that desperate air of people living
in the past, whose greatest achievements were being at the low end of British
crime nearly 40 years ago and spending more time in prison than the average
bloke. They have only one thing to sell, it seems to me: their image as
gangsters. Except they weren't very good gangsters. Consider that Mad Frank:
Britain's Most Dangerous Criminal! focuses far more on the brothers Kray
than it does Mad Frank, only reinforcing the general impression of Frank as a
hanger-on, a sycophant who desperately craves the infamy of his more notorious
contemporaries—and that the only marketable aspect of this DVD is Mad
Frank's connection with the Krays.

Yes, I'm afraid to say that this disc is simply a waste of time and money.
It's at the very low end of cheaply-produced, exploitative true-crime
"documentary" discs. I can't even imagine that fans of that sort of
thing would find anything worth their while in Mad Frank: Britain's Most
Dangerous Criminal! Hard man? Legend? Britain's most dangerous criminal?
That may or may not be the case—and if you ask my wife, it's far,
far from being the case—but this shoddy effort from across the pond
isn't going to do very much to secure Mad Frank's place in the annals of crime.
"WE PRODUCE AND SHOOT ALL OUR OWN DVDs," proclaims the Gangster Videos
Web site, but after looking this disc over, I'm not so sure they should bragging
about that.

This DVD is as guilty as a guilty thing on a guilty day, and is remanded to
the custody of the rubbish bin.

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